4: A.D. 220-1200
<< 3: Religion and Superstition || 5: Women and Children >>
The long-lived and glorious House of Han was brought to a close by the
usual causes. There were palace intrigues and a temporary usurpation
of the throne, eunuchs of course being in the thick of the mischief;
added to which a very serious rebellion broke out, almost as a natural
consequence. First and last there arose three aspirants to the
Imperial yellow, which takes the place of purple in ancient Rome; the
result being that, after some years of hard fighting, China was
divided into three parts, each ruled by one of the three rivals. The
period is known in history as that of the Three Kingdoms, and lasted
from A.D. 220 to A.D. 265. This short space of time was filled,
especially the early years, with stirring deeds of heroism and
marvellous strategical operations, fortune favouring first one of the
three commanders and then another. The whole story of these civil wars
is most graphically told in a famous historical romance composed about
a thousand years afterwards. As in the case of the Waverley novels, a
considerable amount of fiction has been interwoven with truth to make
the narrative more palatable to the general reader; but its basis is
history, and the work is universally regarded among the Chinese
themselves as one of the most valuable productions in the lighter
branches of their literature.
The three to four centuries which follow on the above period were a
time of political and social disorganisation, unfavourable, according
to Chinese writers, to the development of both literature and art. The
House of Chin, which at first held sway over a once more united
empire, was severely harassed by the Tartars on the north, who were in
turn overwhelmed by the House of Toba. The latter ruled for some two
hundred years over northern China, while the southern portions were
governed by several short-lived native dynasties. A few points in
connexion with these times deserve perhaps brief mention.
The old rule of twenty-seven months of mourning for parents was
re-established, and has continued in force down to the present day.
The Japanese sent occasional missions, with tribute; and the Chinese,
who had already in A.D. 240 dispatched an envoy to Japan, repeated the
compliment in 608. An attempt was made to conquer Korea, and envoys
were sent to countries as far off as Siam. Buddhism, which had been
introduced many centuries previously—no one can exactly say when—
began to spread far and wide, and appeared to be firmly established.
In A.D. 399 a Buddhist priest, named Fa Hsien, started from Central
China and travelled to India across the great desert and over the
Hindu Kush, subsequently visiting Patna, Benares, Buddha-Gaya, and
other well-known spots, which he accurately described in the record of
his journey published on his return and still in existence. His object
was to obtain copies of the sacred books, relics and images,
illustrative of the faith; and these he safely conveyed to China by
sea from India, via Ceylon (where he spent three years), and Sumatra,
arriving after an absence of fifteen years.
In the year A.D. 618 the House of T'ang entered upon its glorious
course of three centuries in duration. Under a strong but dissolute
ruler immediately preceding, China had once more become a united
empire, undivided against itself; and although wars and rebellions
were not wanting to disturb the even tenor of its way, the general
picture presented to us under the new dynasty of the T'angs is one of
national peace, prosperity, and progress. The name of this House has
endured, like that of Han, to the present day in the popular language
of the people; for just as the northerners still delight to style
themselves "good sons of Han," so are the southerners still proud to
speak of themselves as "men of T'ang."
One of the chief political events of this period was the usurpation of
power by the Empress Wu—at first, as nominal regent on behalf of a
step-child, the son and heir of her late husband by his first wife,
and afterwards, when she had set aside the step-child, on her own
account. There had been one previous instance of a woman wielding the
Imperial sceptre, namely, the Empress Lu of the Han dynasty, to whom
the Chinese have accorded the title of legitimate ruler, which has not
been allowed to the Empress Wu. The latter, however, was possessed of
much actual ability, mixed with a kind of midsummer madness; and so
long as her great intellectual faculties remained unimpaired, she
ruled, like her successor of some twelve centuries afterwards, with a
rod of iron. In her old age she was deposed and dismissed to private
life, the rightful heir being replaced upon his father's throne.
Among the more extravagant acts of her reign are some which are still
familiar to the people of to-day. Always, even while her husband was
alive, she was present, behind a curtain, at councils and audiences;
after his death she was accustomed to take her place openly among the
ministers of state, wearing a false beard. In 694 she gave herself the
title of Divine Empress, and in 696 she even went so far as to style
herself God Almighty. In her later years she became hopelessly
arrogant and overbearing. No one was allowed to say that the Empress
was fair as a lily or lovely as a rose, but that the lily was fair or
the rose lovely as Her Majesty. She tried to spread the belief that
she was really the Supreme Being by forcing flowers artificially and
then in the presence of her courtiers ordering them to bloom. On one
occasion she commanded some peonies to bloom; and because they did not
instantly obey, she caused every peony in the capital to be pulled up
and burnt, and prohibited the cultivation of peonies ever afterwards.
She further decided to place her sex once and for all on an equality
with man. For that purpose women were admitted to the public
examinations, official posts being conferred upon those who were
successful; and among other things they were excused from kneeling
while giving evidence in courts of justice. This innovation, however,
did not fulfil its promise; and with the disappearance of its vigorous
foundress, the system also disappeared. It was not actually the first
time in Chinese history that the experiment had been tried. An emperor
of the third century A.D. had already opened public life to women, and
it is said that many of them rose to high office; but here too the
system was of short duration, and the old order was soon restored.
Another striking picture of the T'ang dynasty is presented by the
career of an emperor who is usually spoken of as Ming Huang, and who,
after distinguishing himself at several critical junctures, mounted
the throne in 712, in succession to his father, who had abdicated in
his favour. He began with economy, closing the silk factories and
forbidding the palace ladies to wear jewels or embroideries,
considerable quantities of which were actually burnt. He was a warm
patron of literature, and schools were established in every village.
Fond of music, he founded a college for training youth of both sexes
in this art. His love of war and his growing extravagance led to
increased taxation, with the usual consequences in China—discontent
and rebellion. He surrounded himself by a brilliant court, welcoming
men of genius in literature and art; at first for their talents alone,
but finally for their readiness to participate in scenes of revelry
and dissipation provided for the amusement of a favourite concubine,
the ever-famous Yang Kuei-fei (pronounced Kway-fay). Eunuchs were
appointed to official posts, and the grossest forms of religious
superstition were encouraged. Women ceased to veil themselves, as of
old. At length, in 755, a serious rebellion broke out, and a year
later the emperor, now an old man of seventy-one, fled before the
storm. He had not proceeded far before his soldiery revolted and
demanded vengeance upon the whole family of the favourite, several
unworthy members of which had been raised to high positions and loaded
with honours. The wretched emperor was forced to order the head eunuch
to strangle his idolized concubine, while the rest of her family
perished at the hands of the troops. He subsequently abdicated in
favour of his son, and spent the last six years of his life in
seclusion.
This tragic story has been exquisitely told in verse by one of China's
foremost poets, who was born only a few years later. He divides his
poem into eight parts, dealing with the ennui of the monarch until
he discovers beauty, the revelry of the pair together, followed by
the horrors of flight, to end in the misery of exile without her,
the return when the emperor passes again by the fatal spot, home
where everything reminds him of her, and finally spirit-land. This
last is a figment of the poet's imagination. He pictures the
disconsolate emperor sending a magician to discover Yang Kuei-fei's
whereabouts in the next world, and to bear to her a message of
uninterrupted love. The magician, after a long search, finds her in
one of the Isles of the Blest, and fulfils his commission accordingly.
Her features are fixed and calm, though myriad tears fall,
Wetting a spray of pear-bloom, as it were with the raindrops of
spring.
Subduing her emotions, restraining her grief, she tenders thanks
to His Majesty.
Saying how since their parting she had missed his form and voice;
And how, although their love on earth had so soon come to an end,
The days and months among the Blest were still of long duration.
And now she turns and gazes towards the above of mortals,
But cannot discern the Imperial city, lost in the dust and haze.
Then she takes out the old keepsake, tokens of undying love,
A gold hairpin, an enamel brooch, and bids the magician carry
these back.
One half of the hairpin she keeps, and one half of the enamel
brooch,
Breaking with her hands the yellow gold, and dividing the enamel
in two.
"Tell him," she said, "to be firm of heart, as this gold and
enamel,
And then in heaven or on earth below we two may meet once more."
The magnificent House of T'ang was succeeded by five insignificant
dynasties, the duration of all of which was crowded into about half a
century. Then, in A.D. 960, began the rule of the Sungs (pronounced
Soongs), to last for three hundred years and rival in national peace
and prosperity any other period in the history of China. The nation
had already in a great measure settled down to that state of material
civilization and mental culture in which it has remained to the
present time. To the appliances of ordinary Chinese life it is
probable that but few additions have been made since a very early
date. The dress of the people has indeed undergone several variations,
but the ploughs and hoes, the water-wheels and well-sweeps, the tools
of the artisans, mud huts, carts, junks, chairs, tables, chopsticks,
etc., which we still see in China, are probably very much those of two
thousand years ago. Mencius, of the third century B.C., observed that
written characters had the same form, and axle-trees the same breadth,
all over the empire; and to this day an unaltering uniformity is one
of the chief characteristics of the Chinese people in every department
of life.
In spite, however, of the peaceful aspirations of the House of Sung,
the Kitan Tartars were for ever encroaching upon Chinese territory,
and finally overran and occupied a large part of northern China, with
their capital where Peking now stands. This resulted in an amicable
arrangement to divide the empire, the Kitans retaining their conquests
in the north, from which, after about two hundred years, they were in
turn expelled by the Golden Tartars, who had previously been subject
to them.
Many volumes, rather than pages, would be required to do justice to
the statesmen, soldiers, philosophers, poets, historians, art critics,
and other famous men of this dynasty. It has already been stated that
the interpretation of the Confucian Canon, accepted at the present
day, dates from this period; and it may now be of interest to give a
brief account of another remarkable movement connected with the
dynasty, though in quite a different line.
Wang An-shih (as shi in shirk), popularly known as the Reformer,
was born in 1021. In his youth a keen student, his pen seemed to fly
over the paper. He rose to high office; and by the time he was forty-
eight he found himself installed as confidential adviser to the
emperor. He then entered upon a series of startling political reforms,
said to be based upon new and more correct interpretations of portions
of the Confucian Canon, which still remained, so far as explanation
was concerned, just as it had been left by the scholars of the Han
dynasty. This appeal to authority was, of course, a mere blind,
cleverly introduced to satisfy the bulk of the population, who were
always unwilling to move in any direction where no precedent is
forthcoming. One of his schemes, the express object of which was to
decrease taxation and at the same time to increase the revenue, was to
secure a sure and certain market for all products, as follows. From
the produce of a given district, enough was to be set aside (1) for
the payment of taxes, and (2) to supply the wants of the district; (3)
the balance was then to be taken over by the state at a low rate, and
held for a rise or forwarded to some centre where there happened to be
a demand. There would be thus a certainty of market for the farmer,
and an equal certainty for the state to make profits as a middleman.
Another part of this scheme consisted in obligatory advances by the
state to cultivators of land, whether these farmers required the money
or not, the security for the loans being in each case the growing
crops.
There was also a system of tithing for military purposes, under which
every family having more than two males was bound to supply one to
serve as a soldier; and in order to keep up a breed of cavalry horses,
every family was compelled to take charge of one, which was provided,
together with its food, by the government. There was a system under
which money payments were substituted for the old-fashioned and
vexatious method of carrying on public works by drafts of forced
labourers; and again another under which warehouses for bartering and
hypothecating goods were established all over the empire.
Of all his innovations the most interesting was that all land was to
be remeasured and an attempt made to secure a more equitable incidence
of taxation. The plan was to divide up the land into equal squares,
and to levy taxes in proportion to the fertility of each. This scheme
proved for various reasons to be unworkable; and the bitter opposition
with which, like all his other measures of reform, it was received by
his opponents, did not conduce to success. Finally, he abolished all
restrictions upon the export of copper, the result being that even the
current copper "cash" were melted down and made into articles for sale
and exportation. A panic ensued, which Wang met by the simple
expedient of doubling the value of each cash. He attempted to reform
the examination system, requiring from the candidate not so much
graces of style as a wide acquaintance with practical subjects.
"Accordingly," says one Chinese author, "even the pupils at the
village schools threw away their text-books of rhetoric, and began to
study primers of history, geography, and political economy"—a
striking anticipation of the movement in vogue to-day. "I have myself
been," he tells us, "an omnivorous reader of books of all kinds, even,
for example, of ancient medical and botanical works. I have, moreover,
dipped into treatises on agriculture and on needlework, all of which I
have found very profitable in aiding me to seize the great scheme of
the Canon itself." But like many other great men, he was in advance of
his age. He fell into disfavour at court, and was dismissed to a
provincial post; and although he was soon recalled, he retired into
private life, shortly afterwards to die, but not before he had seen
the whole of his policy reversed.
His career stands out in marked contrast with that of the great
statesman and philosopher, Chu Hsi (pronounced Choo Shee), who
flourished A.D. 1130-1200. His literary output was enormous and his
official career successful; but his chief title to fame rests upon his
merits as a commentator on the Confucian Canon. As has been already
stated, he introduced interpretations either wholly or partly at
variance with those which had been put forth by the scholars of the
Han dynasty, and hitherto received as infallible, thus modifying to a
certain extent the prevailing standard of political and social
morality. His guiding principle was merely one of consistency. He
refused to interpret words in a given passage in one sense, and the
same words occurring elsewhere in another sense. The effect of this
apparently obvious method was magical; and from that date the
teachings of Confucius have been universally understood in the way in
which Chu Hsi said they ought to be understood.
To his influence also must be traced the spirit of materialism which
is so widely spread among educated Chinese. The God in whom Confucius
believed, but whom, as will be seen later on, he can scarcely be said
to have "taught," was a passive rather than an active God, and may be
compared with the God of the Psalms. He was a personal God, as we know
from the ancient character by which He was designated in the written
language of early ages, that character being a rude picture of a man.
This view was entirely set aside by Chu Hsi, who declared in the
plainest terms that the Chinese word for God meant nothing more than
"abstract right;" in other words, God was a principle. It is
impossible to admit such a proposition, which was based on sentiment
and not on sound reasoning. Chu Hsi was emphatically not a man of
religious temperament, and belief in the supernatural was distasteful
to him; he was for a short time under the spell of Buddhism, but threw
that religion over for the orthodoxy of Confucianism. He was,
therefore, anxious to exclude the supernatural altogether from the
revised scheme of moral conduct which he was deducing from the
Confucian Canon, and his interpretation of the word "God" has been
blindly accepted ever since.
When Chu Hsi died, his coffin is said to have taken up a position,
suspended in the air, about three feet from the ground. Whereupon his
son-in-law, falling on his knees beside the bier, reminded the
departed spirit of the great principles of which he had been such a
brilliant exponent in life—and the coffin descended gently to the
ground.
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